Review by dentman42 
UPDATED: 1.2 years ago
member for 8.1 years, 879 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Columbus,Franklin,OH
 $35 per month
 about 9 days
 AT&T
 "No problems with self install, line was active 2 days early"
 "Upgrade from Pro to Elite required ATT Direct to fix Redback profile"
 "Great deal for the price, very stable (only 2 or 3 outages in 2.5 years)"
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Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
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Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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Started with Express (1.5/384) in January 2006 for 14.99 with 6 month term. Equipment arrived with a few days to spare and DSL signal was present 2 days earlier than promised. I upgraded to Pro (3/512) for 17.99 with 12 year term a couple of months later. Toward the end of that year, Elite became available for 34.99 with no contract so I upgraded. This time, they didn't get the Redback profile right so I was at 3/768. A quick message in the AT&T Direct forum resolved that within 12 hours. Service has been stable with only 2 or 3 outages that I can remember (worst one was when the core router upgrade in Ameritech region went sour - that was probably 12-16 hours in duration), then a couple of outages that were over within 30 minutes of the time I discovered them. I also have Road Runner and I think it's had slightly more downtime than my DSL in the same time period, but both have been very stable.
Install was pretty easy, only 4 jacks to put filters on. Initially, I could only get sync at one outlet, and it was below 1.5/768 but that was resolved by removing an RF trap on the line (CB ingress also disappeared when the trap was removed. Some trap.). There's about 10dB s/n drop from the NID to the outlet, which is wired with what appears to be intercom wire (3 conductor). I keep meaning to do a new home run, but as I have full sync on Elite with a few dB of s/n to spare, it hasn't happened yet.
The worst problem was that the equipment rebate took about 9 months to arrive. After more than 2 years, the original modem still works fine, though it's required a hard reset (breaking the seal and hitting the reset button) once after a power flicker.
I even run a lot of torrents with no problems, though I set the (Speedstream) 4100 to PPPoE on computer and let the router handle the PPPoE session.
I just hope they don't start any kind of throttling or usage caps. If they do, I'm gone.
All in all, BBR sold me on trying the service between the AT&T midwest forum (with great posts about pricing, installation and problem solving - I wouldn't have known how to troubleshoot back to the NID without this site) and AT&T Direct help.
Also, my brother in law had upgraded from Express to Pro and saw no increase in speed. They were supposed to have downgraded him back to Express but his bill said otherwise. He had a 5100A (no line stats) so I took a 5100B over and used it to check line stats, which were very good. AT&T's phone support was useless (and was provided by a call center in India  ) but a post the next Monday morning in AT&T Direct and by that afternoon Beach Boy/David (he was still Beach Boy then) had the Redback profile corrected and the problem fixed.
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